Life in Colour
by SwanQueenUK
Summary: A SwanQueen oneshot based on a prompt from the 300th reviewer of Always Alone. What happens when the women's magic touches one another for the first time? Fun, cute, sweet, SwanQueen fluff!


A/N: this is a oneshot for the 300th reviewer of Always Alone, Han22. Prompt revealed at the end. Name comes from a OneRepublic song, not my imagination! I thought the lyrics worked well with the prompt. Sweet, fluffy SwanQueen goodness. Set some time during Season 3 after they've come back from Neverland and before they go to the Enchanted Forest.

* * *

She concentrated hard, her hands extended in front of her, eyes locked on the target. Her fingers tingled, small sparks flying from their tips but fading in the air seconds later. A frustrated huff came from beside her.

"I'm trying," Emma growled.

"Try harder," Regina replied tersely.

They'd already been out in the forest for close to two hours that afternoon. It was a weekly meeting after months of incessant pleading by the sheriff. Regina had finally relented and agreed to tutor the young woman in the art of magic. The lessons so far had been met with limited success and already the mayor was unsure whether Emma even had any natural magical ability she could harness and control or if she was just wasting her time.

"You know telling me to try harder doesn't exactly help," Emma said, wiggling her fingers which were still feeling a little electrified. "I mean, it's not exactly a detailed instruction. What exactly am I supposed to be trying to do?"

"I told you," Regina sighed. "You're supposed to be concentrating on that tree and moving it towards us. Pulling it, I suppose."

"How?"

Regina cast around for the right word to describe the feeling which filled her up every time she performed that particular spell.

"It feels kind of like you're glowing, like you're attracting the object to you," she said eventually. "Imagine you're a magnet and you're lighting up with power and the tree wants it. That's why its coming towards you."

"A glowing magnet," Emma frowned. "Right."

She turned back around and repositioned her hands in the air, pointing towards the tree. She closed her eyes.

 _Concentrate Swan_ , she thought. _Glowing. Magnets. Attract the tree_.

"Open your eyes," Regina snapped. "You need to see the object clearly, otherwise you'll be casting your magic all over the place and I'll have to tell Henry how his mother got buried under a pile of trees because she wasn't able to pick just one."

Emma narrowed her eyes at the woman beside her before turning back to her target. Her fingers ached with effort now and she knew she'd soon have to break. But she tried once more, her mind thinking magnetic, glowing thoughts. The soil around the base of the tree cracked, mud spurting up into the air as a hot pulse shot through her arms. She whipped her head around to look at Regina whose eyebrows were raised in surprise.

"Keep going," she encouraged, stepping towards Emma.

She did, her effort redoubled now she could see some progress. Slowly, bit by bit, the tree creaked and groaned as it began to edge its way towards them. Emma smiled widely and felt the magic flowing white-hot through her veins. Suddenly, the tree began to gather speed, almost flying through the air towards the two of them, a huge trench gouged in the soil as it went, branches whipping through the leafy foliage as it raced along.

Regina appeared out of nowhere, knocking Emma's hands out of the way and shielding the two of them with a protection spell. The tree smashed into the invisible barrier and shattered into thousands of pieces. The forest was silent once more.

Rubbing her head, Emma looked up from her place on the ground and gasped. She scrambled to her feet and stared around, wide-eyed.

"Regina?" she said, her voice trembling with nerves. "What the hell just happened."

The older woman didn't answer. Instead, she stepped carefully over to a nearby tree, her fingers reaching out to touch a leaf, running her finger across its surface. Next she turned her face up towards the sky, blinking in the bright light. When the sun became too much for her eyes, she looked at the woman standing dumbstruck in the middle of the clearing.

"What is this?" Emma asked again.

"I think it's …,"

She trailed off, not wanting to verbalise what her brain was telling her had happened. She knew she was right. There was no other explanation. Snow had described it to her when they were in Neverland and there was nothing else she knew of which made sense. Not that anything was making sense to Regina right at that moment.

"Regina," Emma said, interrupting her thoughts. "What the hell is going on? Why can I see …? No, what can I see?"

"Colour," Regina said finally. "We can see colour."

"Colour?" Emma asked, looking around at her environment through literally a new set of eyes. "As in what my parents can see?"

"Yeah," Regina nodded. "That colour."

"They've told me about this," Emma said. "They have names for them. Like the sky is blue, the sun is yellow and clouds are white or grey when it's raining. And leaves are green and tree trunks are brown. And my favourite jacket is red, apparently. And my hair is called blonde or something?" Emma picked up a chunk of it and dragged it into her vision. "Hmmm, looks like yellow to me."

"Yeah, Snow told me about that too," she said. "The sea is blue too, apparently. And Tinkerbell is green. Well, her clothes not her skin."

Emma held out her hands and tried to work out what sort of colour her skin was. It didn't look like anything else around her and she made a mental note to ask her parents what they called it. But there were other questions which she needed answers to first.

"Why has this happened?" she asked, her chest already feeling tight as her mind raced over everything she knew about her parent's ability to see colour.

Regina moved to sit on a log. Which was brown, Emma decided, with green moss. Regina's hair was brown too, she realised. After a moment's hesitation, she sat down beside the older woman and waited for her to speak.

"It came from our magic," Regina said after a while. "When my shield stopped your tree, which nearly killed us by the way, our magical powers combined and … now we can see colours."

"But … I thought the only way to see colours was to share True Love's Kiss, like my parents," Emma said, remembering the time David and Snow had explained to her how it felt to first see the world in colour. They had been in the Enchanted Forest back then, of course. It was one of Emma's favourite stories about her parents.

"That's one way," Regina nodded. "But there's another."

"Which is?" Emma prompted, already considering the only answer which made sense. Well, not sense.

Regina knew she had to tell Emma what had happened. She suspected the yellow (or blonde) haired woman had guessed the truth. She swallowed.

"True Love's Magic."

Emma looked out across the clearing and let out a long, low whistle. So she had been right. The reason colour had exploded into her vision was because Regina's magic had touched her own and the connection had been … love. Not just love. True Love. Had she known? If she was being honest with herself, yes. She knew what she felt for Regina went far deeper and was far stronger than anything she had ever felt in her life, aside from towards Henry. Everything had been amplified when it came to the older woman. First the physical attraction the day they met, quickly followed by hatred, then the realisation that Regina had cared for and loved her son and how grateful she was to the older woman. Even before Neverland Emma was starting to think of Regina as a friend, someone she could rely on. And then when they had been on the island they had grown even closer. With those feelings of hatred long since faded, Emma had been aware for months that what she felt towards her son's other mother was far from platonic.

"Nothing ever happened with Hook."

"What?" Regina asked, snapped out of her own reverie by the random statement.

"Me and Hook," Emma said, turning to Regina with eyes the colour of fresh spring leaves. "Nothing happened between us."

"So?"

Emma balked at the snapped reply. Had she misread things? Was True Love something that could be unrequited? Her cheeks burned. She wondered briefly what colour her face was turning.

"Sorry," Emma said hastily. "I … well, I thought you might want to know."

"I already knew that," Regina said, her voice a little softer. Emma breathed a sigh of relief. "I knew you weren't really interested in that pirate. I mean, how could you have been?"

Emma raised her eyebrows. Did that mean …?

"Did you know?" Emma asked. "Before five minutes ago, did you know we were True Loves?"

Regina's cheeks turned a little red. Emma supposed that was what hers had done moments before.

"In Neverland," Regina admitted. "When we moved the clouds across the moon. For a moment our magic must have touched because I saw a flash of colour. It only lasted for a second but I knew what it meant. I suppose it was only a matter of time before it happened again."

"Why didn't it become permanent?" Emma asked. "If you saw colour in Neverland, why didn't I? And why did we go back to normal?"

"The rules of the island," Regina said. "I looked it up when we got home. Peter Pan made sure there was no way True Love could break through within the confides of his kingdom. Goodness knows why he wanted to keep out colour. It's rather beautiful I think."

"You're telling me," Emma said, looking straight at the woman beside her.

Regina's eyes widened at the direct comment. She squeezed her thighs together as she saw Emma's green eyes darken slightly. They were both silent for a long time, drinking in the sight of the other as if they had never seen each other before. Which, Regina supposed, they hadn't. Eventually she looked away, Emma's gaze growing too intense.

"What now?" Emma asked.

"I don't know," Regina admitted. "I might have thought about this happening as a possibility but I'd never considered what would happen next."

"What do you want to happen next?" Emma said.

Regina turned back to the blonde again and gave her a small smile which Emma returned enthusiastically.

"I do like you, Emma," she said. "Despite being an infuriating magic student and being incredibly clumsy and having next to no table manner and -,"

"Ok," Emma interrupted. "I get the point."

"Sorry," Regina said. "But what I was saying was that regardless of your many, many, many," she winked, "flaws, I like you a lot. I've known for quite a while that there was something between us, to be honest. I just didn't know how to tell you."

"So you waited until I almost flattened us with a tree and then allowed some magical True Love connection to turn our lives into a kaleidoscope?"

"What's a kaleidoscope?" Regina asked.

"Some kids' toy which Mom and Dad say is way better in colour but to me it just looks like geometric grey patters," Emma said. "But that's not the point. Why didn't you tell me?"

Regina shrugged. "Why didn't you tell me?" she countered. "I know this wasn't one sided, Emma. And to be honest I think you're probably less freaked out by this than I am."

"You're freaked out?" Emma asked.

"I was when I first thought of it as a possibility. And when I first saw colour. But now … I feel oddly calm."

Emma reached over and tangled her fingers with Regina's. The older woman didn't resist and instead looked intently into the bright green eyes before her.

"Me too," Emma said.

Regina's eyes flicked down to Emma's lips. They were a pale red. Pink was the term she thought she remembered from a conversation with Snow. As she watched, the tip of Emma's red tongue darted out to wet the flesh. Regina pulled her own lip between her teeth as she stared at the now glistening lip. Her gaze returned to Emma's eyes which were twinkling with knowing. The blonde gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head.

Their lips brushed lightly at first, the flesh pressed against one another as both women gasped at the tingling feeling spreading from the contact. Their lips parted, Regina's upper slid between Emma's and was trapped as the blonde began to move her mouth. Hands landed on Regina's hips, pulling her slightly closer across the mossy log. Regina reached up to tangle her fingers in blonde hair, tilting Emma's head sideways slightly as she allowed her tongue to graze along the lower lip. She moaned at the lingering taste of coffee, cinnamon and something which was uniquely Emma. At the noise, the kiss took on a new level of passion. Mouths opened wider and teeth clashed together as tongues began to explore. Regina felt herself being pulled over so her knees were on either side of Emma's thighs, hands gripping her hovering ass. She pushed harder against Emma's mouth, taking over control of the kiss as fingers kneaded her flesh through her pants.

Breathless, they eventually broke apart. Emma's hands lowered Regina's body until she was sitting on her own thighs, Regina's arms looped around her neck. Her blonde hair was mussed and Regina's red lipstick was all but erased. Well, transferred. With a smirk, Regina reached out a thumb and wiped the red marks from Emma's own lips.

"So … what now?" Emma asked, looking up in Regina's face.

"We take things slow," Regina said, ignoring the way Emma's eyebrows raised at their current position. "It might be True Love but that doesn't mean we can't mess it up. Neither of us have the best track record when it comes to relationships so I say we start with a few dates and see what happens."

"Will this happen again?" Emma asked, her hand squeezing Regina's ass again.

The older woman rolled her eyes and Emma just laughed, craning her neck to kiss Regina's lips.

"So," Emma said when the kiss ended half an hour later. "This is life in colour."

* * *

A/N: Prompt: Regina is teaching Emma magic and their magic somehow connects and explodes leaving Regina and Emma seeing colours for the first time.


End file.
